ART

ART; 7BRs, OcnVu, WrldClass Art

Published: March 14, 2004

Correction Appended

(Page 2 of 3)

In 1998, Mr. Margulies added a new dimension to his obsession: photography. ''The bottom line,'' he explains, ''was that in the late 90's I couldn't afford to get into the game for seminal works, so I said to myself, 'What do I do now?' Somehow I kept looking at one photograph that I still have hanging here'' -- a Thomas Ruff image of a young woman -- ''and she kept looking back at me.'' He has amassed more than 3,500 pictures, by photographers from the Thomases -- Ruff and Struth -- to Hilla and Bernd Becher and classics like Walker Evans and Eugene Smith. ''And then the photos weren't enough,'' he says. ''You can't walk into just a place with photography. You have to have something more dynamic as well, and that led to videos and installation work, and there you have the warehouse.''

Like the Rubells, Mr. Margulies gravitated toward the gritty Wynwood area, purchasing a 35,000-square-foot double warehouse in 1999, which is currently being enlarged by 10,000 square feet. ''We had no plan, just shoot from the hip,'' Mr. Margulies says. ''We are just having fun with it. I'm being educated myself, I'm educating other people and, gee whiz, what a great way to do things.''

The warehouse attracts some 200 people a week. Run by Mr. Margulies's longtime curator, Katherine Hinds, it includes works both silly (Tony Oursler's goggle-eyed ovoid, ''Coo'') and serious (Peter Friedl's video about apartheid, ''King Kong''). The space is scented by the spices suspended in Ernesto Neto's huge biomorphic sculpture, ''E O Bicho.'' Past the superannuated superheroes of Gilles Barbier's ''L'Hospice'' are walls and walls of photographs, from Cindy Sherman to Seydou Keita. There are videos by artists like Vanessa Beecroft, queasy dioramas by Thomas Hirshhorn and sculptures by Frank Stella and Takashi Murakami.

Already almost too much to take in during one visit, the warehouse also sponsors regular educational tours and a lecture series.

Dennis and Debra Scholl Collection

Dennis and Debra Scholl are as attractive and well-groomed as their photographs -- beautifully hung in their waterfront home, with its his and her kayaks -- are in-your-face and iconoclastic. ''You want be uncomfortable with your collection,'' Mr. Scholl says. ''And I don't mean necessarily about content, because we're beyond that. We've got works that are nasty. I've got Vito Acconci masturbating in my living room, O.K.? So it's not about imagery, but we want to be uncomfortable in the sense that we want to be taking risks when we buy work.''

The Scholls, both in their late 40's, began collecting art when they were law students at Miami University. In the 1980's they got into real estate, becoming involved in South Beach's Art Deco renovation. Mr. Scholl, a confessed ''obsessive-compulsive,'' credits collecting with giving him ''a way to bring some order to the world.'' This includes inviting a different celebrated curator down each year to organize and rehang the work. ''We leave for three days and give them access to all the art, including what's in storage, and when we come back we have this beautiful, incredible museum-quality installation,'' he explains.

The results were so spectacular that the Scholls began to open the house by appointment; last year about 2,000 visitors strolled through. Mr. Scholl says: ''It's a joy to be able to have people come and see what you've done and be as excited as you are about it. And you recognize that it is really not your stuff. These are things that we're the stewards of -- hopefully -- for a long, long time.''

The Scholl's photography collection includes works by Naomi Fisher, Rineke Dijkstra, Richard Prince, Barbara Kruger, Matthew Barney, Kathy Opie, Anna Gaskell and Cady Noland, among others. It starts in their foyer, winds its way through their kitchen, living room, guest room and master bedroom and ends in their bathroom. Besides the Acconci, their living room is dominated by Matthew Barney's baroque photographic series ''Cremaster Suite,'' an Olafur Eliasson photograph and a Robert Gober sculpture (a twine-bound stack of newspapers they often keep in the closet so it won't be discarded), among other works. The art in the kitchen includes Jenny Holzer's aptly titled ''Put Food Out.'' The master bedroom has Richard Prince's ''Four Women With Hats'' above the bed and a stunning Barbara Kruger titled ''we are not made for each other.'' Some of the more disturbing photographs -- Cindy Sherman as a burn victim, Katy Grannan's startling portrait of a nude woman and her pet Husky -- decorate the den.

Unable to contain their collecting habit, the Scholls have branched out into installation work: the Day-Glo colored ''Zobop'' stairs to their second floor are by Jim Lambie, as is a door in the former ''football'' room, which now houses conceptual and video art. But eventually they ran out of space. ''We were offered some extraordinary works that couldn't fit in the house,'' Mr. Scholl explains. So the couple bought several warehouses in the Wynwood district. Thus was born World Class Boxing, a former boxing gym that currently houses a single, enormous installation, Olafur Eliasson's ''Light Ventilator Mobile.''

Phoebe Hoban, the author of ''Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art,'' is writing a biography of Alice Neel.

Correction: March 14, 2004, Sunday An article continuation on Page 31 of Arts & Leisure today about private art collections in Miami that are open to the public misidentifies the university where the collectors Debra and Dennis Scholl met as law students. It was Miami in Florida, not Miami of Ohio.